


Fool's Holiday

by southspinner



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Christmas Fluff, Engagement, Fluff, Implied Sexual Content, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-03-03 11:40:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2849594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/southspinner/pseuds/southspinner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jean's not fond of Christmas. However, he doesn’t account for the Marco Factor when he’s laying his intricate plan to become a holiday hermit, and that small mental slip plays out to be a fatal flaw.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fool's Holiday

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ohsnapCiera](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohsnapCiera/gifts).



Jean Kirschtein isn’t the biggest fan of the holiday season. Which is to say, he fucking hates it.

A time of joy and wonderment for the rest of the world translates to crowded stores and slick roads and downing bottles of Vitamin D pills like Pez candies to him. The picture-perfect images of the families in saccharine TV commercials leave a sour taste in his mouth when he thinks about spending another year riding out the obligatory dinners and gritting his teeth against approximately fifteen thousand passive-aggressive questions from his nosy aunts about when he’s planning to bring a girl around. Watching kids running around with brand new video game systems only serves to remind him of a lifetime with a single mom who worked her fingers to the bone, of listening to her cry during December nights when she thought he was asleep because she knew he’d have to spend another Christmas morning acting excited over socks and a hand-knit sweater.

Jean’s not fond of the holidays, and that’s why during his first winter away from home - rainy Seattle and a tiny grad-student-appropriate apartment on the other side of the country from the ass-deep snow of Vermont and the constant mental image of his family descending upon him like buzzards on roadkill - he resolves with a smile to be an utter fucking Scrooge from the second week of November all the way up until Walmart clears out every single scrap of shiny cellophane New Year’s party supplies to die alone and unloved on the clearance aisle.

However, he doesn’t account for the Marco Factor when he’s laying his intricate plan to become a holiday hermit, and that small mental slip plays out to be a fatal flaw.

Marco Bodt hails from an entirely different walk of life than Jean does, and most of the time Jean loves him for the change in perspective alone. Marco’s parents are still together and the kind of stupid, gross old-people-in-love that you see on crappy Lifetime movies at 4AM. He grew up far from Jean’s experience as a destitute only child in an overly-critical extended family, six siblings and a neurosurgeon for a father, and apparently the only reaction upon him telling his family somewhere in their sophomore year of undergrad that he had a boyfriend was his mom asking if Jean was allergic to anything so she’d know what to make when Marco brought him over for dinner.

That seems like forever ago, especially when Jean thinks about the progression from stolen kisses behind closed dorm room doors to tentatively holding Marco’s hand on the way across a campus that’s a continent away now, from Marco filling out his own graduation paperwork and stopping to bring Jean coffee while he studied for his GRE to a long drive cross-country in Jean’s geriatric ninety-something Corolla, from a twin-sized mattress and dog-eared Doctor Who posters in his bedroom in Vermont to the two of them having identical keys on their keychains to an apartment that’s _theirs_ , a life that’s _theirs_.

Jean’s mom had stayed up to talk with him the night before he left for Seattle, the sleepless shadows under her eyes and her detergent-cracked fingers a testament to the warning she gave him about rushing into things too young. People always have something about them that you don’t know, she’d told him. You can love someone more than the air you breathe and still find out one day that they aren’t who you thought they were.

And on a particularly gloomy Seattle morning, Jean finds out that she was right.

It’s the day after Thanksgiving, and when he stumbles out of the bedroom only to have his bleary eyes accosted with a metric shit-ton of tinsel draped across all his worldly possessions, he realizes that Marco isn’t who he thought he was. Marco is, horrifyingly, one of _those people._

A Christmas Warrior.

He pinches a golden strand of tinsel between his thumb and forefinger, skin crawling at the contact, and holds it out in front of him like a bomb, walking into the living room like Rage Incarnate in ratty Avengers boxers and blonde bedhead. “Baby, why does our apartment look like the North Pole jizzed all over it?”

There’s a rattle from the kitchen area over by the front door, a metallic clanging of pots and pans before Marco’s head pops up over the counter, grin a mile wide and freckled cheeks flushed from effort as he dumps an armload of disorganized crap onto the ugly yellow formica. “Black Friday! I’ve been out since four this morning. HomeGoods was having killer sales on Christmas stuff. I’ve got the apartment decorated and all the stuff to do up a tree when we get one--”

“Marco.”

“Don’t worry, we still have rent money, I set up a Christmas Club account at the bank as soon as we moved in--”

_“Marco.”_

“I Googled where the nearest tree farm is and it’s a pretty long haul, so we need to schedule a mutual day off sometime soon…”

“Marco!” His boyfriend stops mid-ramble with a confused puppy-like tilt of his head, and Jean brings the hand that isn’t holding the demon tinsel up to pinch the bridge of his nose. “It is November. It is literally _November_.”

Marco blinks, big molten-chocolate eyes that don’t have a single clue why Jean’s on the verge of piling every scrap of festivity in the apartment up and lighting a match. “Yeah?”

“It’s November, and it looks like Santa’s workshop in here, and it’s a little overbea--... what the _hell_ are you wearing?”

Marco beams again, hopping up and sliding over the counter to land in front of Jean with a little _oof_ on impact, proudly showing off a hideous, oversized sweater knitted with prancing reindeer and strings of Christmas lights. “I found it at Goodwill! Christa told me that the last day before break, all the teachers do an ugly sweater day. Figured I’d grab a cheap one.”

“An ugly sweater day.” Jean feels a vein pulsing in his temple, sucks in a deep breath and reminds himself that things like ugly sweater days and a glittery apartment are the price of being in love with and cohabitating with a kindergarten teacher. “Do I even want to ask what you were doing in the cupboard?”

“Looking for batteries,” says Marco, holding up two triple-A’s between elegant fingers and rolling up the bottom of his sweater with his other hand. “I wasn’t sure if it would still work, but if I’m lucky…”

There’s a small white plastic battery pack sewn inside the hem, and as Marco snaps the salvaged batteries into place, the strings of little plastic Christmas lights on the sweater blaze to life, blinking festively. Jean can feel a migraine coming on. Marco giggles. _Giggles._

“Okay, I’m not doing this,” Jean sighs after a beat.

The smile dies on Marco’s face, and Jean kind of wants to kick his own ass. “Doing what?”

“This. The peppy music, the TV specials, the… fucking tinsel all over my shit in fucking November,” he grumbles, pausing to drop the offending decoration on the counter like evidence in a criminal case. “The holiday thing. I’m not doing it.”

Picture a puppy. The cutest little brown, spotted Beagle puppy in existence. Now kick that puppy as hard as you can. That’s what Marco looks like, standing there in his fucking blinking Christmas light sweater and dark ruffled hair, a twenty-three year old grown-ass man who is legitimately upset that his boyfriend doesn’t believe in the magic of Christmas. It should not make Jean feel like a terrible human being as much as it does.

“What do you mean?” Marco asks, sounding so wounded that Jean almost - _almost_ \- backpedals.

“Look, sweetheart, I just… the holidays are a pain in the ass, okay?” It’s easier than trying to articulate the real explanation, that he’s just so _tired_ of feeling alone in crowded rooms, and that he just wants to be able to get his feet under him and stand solid for once, and that months of forced happiness make it hard to ignore the sadness sitting beneath his skin, always ready to come out and make everything difficult when it’s least wanted. Jean knows how Marco works, and he knows that his own personal brand of fucked up would result in Marco blaming himself if he tried to explain. So instead, he lets himself be the bad guy. He can be the grump, he can be the Scrooge; he’s been doing it for years and it hasn’t stolen Marco’s sunshine or made Marco stop loving him. “And this is the first year I don’t have to do them, so I’m just… not.”

Marco deflates, curling in on himself until it looks like he’s retreating into the festive embrace of his hideous sweater. “Oh. Well, I just, y’know… Christmas is kind of a big thing with my family. And I know we can’t afford to go back to Vermont this year, so I guess I’m overcompensating a bit, trying to feel less homesick. But if it bugs you, I can--”

“No, no, don’t worry about it.” Jean waves him off, guilt sinking hot and leaden in his gut. He’s seen the way Marco looks out the window and frowns at the downtown congestion and the rain, watched the longing on his face every time he Skypes his family and watches the apple trees in their backyard in the background of the video call. He was never dying to get out the way that Jean was. He would have stayed content in tiny towns with tiny people living their tiny lives forever if given the chance - you can teach kindergarten anywhere, as he was so apt to tell Jean whenever the possibility of Seattle for grad school had come up.

Sometimes Marco is so sunny and loving and _good_ that Jean finds it too easy to forget all that he gave up to come here, to be with him. He’s never _seen_ Marco sad, but he’s loved his eyes and the shifting moods behind them too fondly to ever think for a second that just because he hasn’t seen it doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened. If taking that wordless ache out of the corners of Marco’s smile means putting up with some stupid goddamn tinsel, well. Jean figures it’s a small price to pay.

He goes up on tiptoe and kisses his boyfriend’s forehead with a sigh, looking over Marco’s shoulder at the clock on the stove. “Do what you want. Just don’t expect me to get in on the festivities, okay? I gotta get to work. Takeout from Golden Chopsticks tonight?”

“Yeah, sure,” Marco nods, a little of the invisible weight lifting from his shoulders, and Jean decides that he’s repaired enough damage to go shower with a clean conscience.

He leaves in a hurry with a hasty goodbye kiss and a tide of cursing that he can’t find his nametag, but before he lunges out their front door with one shoe untied, the image sears itself into his mind of Marco tacking tinsel up around the window, looking out at the sheets of rain pounding at the glass with a serene smile and softly singing _“Oh, the weather outside is frightful, but the fire is so delightful…”_

* * *

Despite forswearing the holidays, Jean can’t abstain from the holiday bustle if he ever wants to go out in public for the next two months. Traffic in Seattle is hellish on a normal day, but it gets increasingly ridiculous with every passing day as November wanes and December comes in with an onslaught of decorations in storefronts and jingling sleigh bells on every radio commercial he hears sitting bumper-to-bumper in his car for what feels like an eternity every day. Life goes on. Marco goes back to school after Thanksgiving break, and so does he, spending the day in class or beating his head against the bookshelves in the library while wondering why he’d ever been stupid enough to choose Audiology as a career path. Five days out of seven, he works the night shift mixing sangrias for soccer moms that all have the same haircut at Applebee’s, comes home and collapses on the couch and brainlessly watches HGTV while Marco works on lesson plans and wonders if this is what domesticity feels like.

Marco, true to his word, doesn’t take his Christmas Warrioring on an aggressive campaign. The apartment gets decorated, a box of cheap Walmart Christmas cards takes up residence beside a little address book on their counter, and every so often Jean will come in to the Christmas Pandora station playing on Marco’s laptop while he’s cleaning or folding laundry, but it’s bearable. It’s a little more bearable when he notices how happy Marco looks with his ludicrous tinsel nest of an apartment and his lame peppermint coffees that he splurges on at Starbucks and his dorky smile when he walks around humming carols under his breath.

On a rare, blessed Saturday that Jean doesn’t have school or work, he sleeps in until the smell of something absolutely _heavenly_ floats down the hall and wakes him up, tugging him bleary-eyed and rumbly-stomached into the kitchen, where Marco is pacing in front of the oven with an almost manic grin.

“Hm? ‘Tcha makin’?” He slurs through a yawn, turtling down into his hoodie and huddling between Marco and the oven since their shitty heater doesn’t do much to fight the damp cold.

“Gingerbread cookies,” Marco grins, rubbing oven-mitted hands together and watching the oven door anxiously. The oven mitts have fucking snowmen on them. Jesus Christ. “Christa gave me her grandma’s recipe. You remember Christa, right? My aide, cute little blonde girl?”

“The one who gave me the stink eye because I came to drop your lunch off and distracted your kids because they all wanted to touch my tattoos?” Jean laughs, leaning into his toasty boyfriend and nuzzling into the crook of his neck with a little shiver. “Yeah, rings a bell.”

“You caught her on a bad day.” He feels Marco’s voice vibrating through his ribcage more than hears it, the resonance humming a harmony over his own heartbeat something he clings to more than the science of soundwaves hitting eardrums, which he focuses on too much every other fucking day of his life to want to think about it in the quieter moments. Marco slides off one ridiculous snowman oven mitt to trace careful fingertips along the sleeve of jagged, inked lines down Jean’s forearm that mean nothing to the untrained eye.

(Another lesson his mom taught him was never ever _ever_ get someone else in ink on your body, but maybe he didn’t listen, maybe he was testing some new audio analysis software for class and secreted away the visible representation of what it sounds like when Marco says his name, when Marco says _I love you,_ maybe he secreted those soundwaves out of the Audiology lab and into a tattoo parlor and no one ever has to be the wiser about what a big dumb sap he is)

“I’ll take your word for it.” He knows Marco can feel the smirk playing out against his skin, because he feels one echoed in the kiss pressed to the top of his head.

“You wanna help make the next batch?” Marco asks, nudging Jean out of the way to lift the cookie sheet from the oven like some sort of holy relic.

“I told you, I’m boycotting the holidays,” Jean grumps, crossing his arms over his narrow chest and contemplating crawling in the oven to stay warm. “I gotta study for finals, Brezenka’s tests are a _bitch_ …”

“It’s one batch of cookies, love.” Almost placatingly, Marco waves a piping hot gingerbread man under Jean’s nose, pouting until he takes a bite and makes a grudging noise of approval that doesn’t nearly convey how goddamn delicious the thing actually is. “I promise, one batch of cookies won’t turn you into a Christmas elf. Come on.”

One batch of cookies turns into six, and they spend a lazy Saturday with Marco fussing over gumdrop buttons and rewarding Jean as he recites the workings of the inner ear - malleus, incus, stapes, the sound winds through the semi-circular canals and into the cochlea - with little pinches of cookie dough and gingerbread-tinted kisses.

* * *

Finals kick Jean’s ass, but he kicks theirs in turn, headed into winter break with a 3.8 and enough leftover tension lingering in his body that it takes an hour-long back rub and a whole weekend of marathon sex to work it all out. The days go by with the same ridiculous holiday traffic and the same soccer moms chugging Applebee’s sangrias, but sometimes Jean comes home and doesn’t know what to do with himself now that he has a month with no homework. Marco’s break doesn’t start until two days before Christmas, and the lonely time doesn’t sit as well with Jean as he thought it would, curled up under the tinsel and lights with no real sense of direction.

He calls his mom, talks to her about the family plans for the holidays (what?) and says he’s sorry that he can’t make it ( _what?_ ), spends an hour catching up before he gets a text from Marco asking to pick him up from work.

He over-estimates the traffic between the apartment and the suburban elementary school where Marco teaches, ends up sitting in on the last few minutes of class before the kids are herded out to catch their buses. It’s sort of a given that Marco likes kids, what with his - in Jean’s opinion, certifiably fucking insane - choice to be a kindergarten teacher, but liking kids and being _good_ with kids are two different things, and Marco is both. They follow him around like some sort of Pied Piper for tiny humans, pouring out laughter and love all over him just to get it back tenfold. Sitting calmly behind a desk in a North Face jacket so the kids don’t wig out over his ink like they did last time, Jean watches Marco and his cute little blonde aide herd their flock of kids and tries to tell himself that he is _not_ having gross shmoopy domestic thoughts about picket fences and little kids with freckles and sunlight smiles riding around on Marco’s shoulders. It doesn’t work very well.

Marco comes back into the classroom wrapped in a peacoat with his cheeks pink from the cold, leaning over the desk and giving Jean a quick peck on the lips. “Hey. Glad you made it. Traffic’s nuts.”

“Did your carpool crap out on you or something?” Jean asks, standing up and rolling his shoulders - the finals tension is making a reappearance. Time for more back rubs and sex.

“No, no, we’re just taking a little trip, is all.”

Jean knows that look. That’s the same look that tried to bring a kitten home when their lease clearly says no pets allowed. That’s the same look that conned him into being a cookie slave a couple weeks ago. Jean’s eyes narrow skeptically. “What kind of trip?”

And Marco goes straight for the pitiful puppy act, big eyes and a cute-as-fuck little pout as he tugs at Jean’s jacket sleeve. “I found a tree farm that’s like forty-five minutes away, and I know you said that you’re boycotting the holidays or whatever, but we’ve only got the one car and--”

“Marco, seriously?” Jean groans.

His boyfriend is relentless, though, dialing the pout up and even adding a little wobble of his lip. “I’m _sorry!_ I couldn’t find another ride! Please?”

“Just go to Target and get a fake tree!”

“Fake trees are crappy, though,” Marco protests, and Jean can tell that he’s picked up a few lessons in being cute to get what he wants from his kindergarteners. _“Please?”_

“You’re asking me to engage in holiday activities when I have expressly told you--”

“Baby!”

“--that I will have no part in them, Marco, no part!”

“Jeaaaaaaan!”

“Don’t you _Jeaaaaaaan_ me,” Jean grouses, putting up one last, valiant fight to resist the plaintive look on his boyfriend’s face.

But Marco knows how to navigate the Christmas Warrior battlefield, switches tactics before Jean can prepare a better defense, his pout curling into a smirk as he leans forward, winter-cold lips and the hot exhalation of a whisper brushing the shell of Jean’s ear. “If you go get a Christmas tree with me, I will so fuck you on every solid surface in the apartment in gratitude.”

“I’ll go start the car,” says Jean.

* * *

Three days and innumerable small bruises later, Jean will at least admit that the tree makes the apartment smell nice. It took Marco hours to pick the damn thing out, which might have earned Jean a mild case of pneumonia in the process, and the debacle of cutting it down and getting it home strapped atop Jean’s tiny Corolla and hauling it up five flights of stairs was a different affair entirely. But it does make the apartment smell nice.

The Black Friday haul of decorations that Marco bought are already adorning the branches, glittery ornaments in reds and golds that match the tinsel strung up everywhere. It’s December 23, Christmas Eve Eve, and Jean is watching Doctor Who reruns while Marco sits on the other side of the couch, a needle pinched between his fingers and his tongue poking out between his teeth in concentration as he strings a popcorn garland together.

“Baby, why didn’t you just buy a garland?” Jean huffs, cold enough that he’s abandoned his dignity and curled up in Marco’s Snuggie, driven to desperate measures due to lack of cuddle-warmth.

“The popcorn garland is important,” Marco says, simply, not bothering to explain why it’s important.

Jean rolls his eyes but doesn’t question in, twitching a bit at one of the stupid Weeping Angel jumpscares he’d forgotten about and muttering, “Don’t see why we need a tree anyway. Told you I’m not buying presents and that I don’t want anything.”

“Because it’s _important_ , okay?!” He’s not used to the shortness in Marco’s voice, definitely not used to the harness in his eyes when he looks over and sees the hand holding the sewing needle trembling slightly. “You said I could do what I wanted, right? Let me put up the damn tree and make my damn popcorn garland! I’m sorry you’re such a Grinch, but I’m going to do my best to _enjoy_ my holiday even though I’m a million miles from home in a gross rainy city that’s too big, teaching in a school with a Holy Roller PTA that would run me out on a rail if they knew who my roommate actually was!”

“You didn’t have to come with me,” Jean snaps back, immediately on the defensive.

“ _Bullshit_ , Jean,” Marco laughs, but it doesn’t sound right, as cold and unpleasant as the damp wind blowing outside. “I knew you weren’t happy. I knew you needed to get out and seek your great perhaps. I did have to come with you, because I _love_ you, and _sometimes we have to sacrifice our comfort for the people we love._ Like, I don’t know, suffering the presence of a Christmas tree for a few weeks.”

Jean knows he’s in the wrong, feels the ragged hurt in Marco’s voice sinking all the way down to the marrow of his bones, so he does what he always does when he’s on the losing side of an argument. Leaves. He’s got work in a few hours anyway, and Marco’s too proud to try to stop him from going, sitting in stubborn silence as he changes and storms out the door.

When he leaves, there is no contentment in the air, no soft strains of carols floating around the apartment. There’s only Marco, his face washed blue by the TV screen, visibly fighting back tears and stringing popcorn with shaking hands.

He beats himself up during his entire shift, of course, because Jean knows he’s an asshole even if he often realizes it too late to correct his mistake. Connie, one of the busboys, seems to catch on to the little black raincloud hovering over his head, hopping up on the bar after they close and elbowing him in the ribs. “Trouble in paradise, Jeanboy?”

“I’m in holly jolly hell,” Jean grumbles, scrubbing down the bar with more force than is probably necessary. “You know most of the story already.”

“Christmas Warrior boyfriend?”

“I made a comment about the fucking tree today and he went off on me. One dig about a popcorn garland and he’s on this tangent about how he hates it here and how he left Vermont because he loved me and I need to put up with living in a recycled set from Elf because apparently it’s my fault.”

“Wow, you moved him to a town he hates and you won’t even let him have his Christmas tree in peace?” Connie snorts, jumping off the bar and throwing a towel over his shoulder. “Dude. You’re a dick.”

“Yeah, I know,” Jean sighs, talking to the racks of empty glasses after Connie goes to clock out. “I know.”

He stops at Walmart on the way home because it’s the only place that’s still open, buys two new cookie sheets because the ones they have now stick like crazy, a nice watch from the jewelry counter to replace one that got left in a motel between Vermont and Seattle, and a huge book of crosswords because Marco is a literal old man and likes to do them while he eats his breakfast. It’s not enough to compensate for his assholery, but nothing ever really is. He’s been riding on Marco’s patience and Marco’s love and Marco’s unconditional forgiveness for years.

Jean stops on the way out and gets everything giftwrapped, pretty red paper and gold bows. It’s not enough, but it’s a start.

The living room is still and dark when he gets home, lit only by the tree in the corner, the popcorn garland looped carefully over the branches. He slides the gifts carefully beneath the lowest boughs and tells himself that sometimes we have to sacrifice our comfort for the people we love. Marco’s so dead asleep that he doesn’t even stir when Jean peels out of his work clothes and crawls into bed, or at least he pretends to be, but after a moment he murmurs sleepily and scoots back into the wiry curve of Jean’s body, letting him tangle their limbs together and pull him close. They haven’t had the inevitable post-argument talk yet, but Jean feels Marco’s fingers mapping out the inked sound of _I love you_ on his arm even in his sleep, and knows that all is forgiven.

* * *

Jean has to work an early shift the next day after closing the night before - and grumbles the whole way to Applebee’s about places being open on Christmas Eve being a load of capitalist bullshit - gets up and leaves quietly while Marco is still sleeping, fatigue overcoming his schoolteacher’s body clock and actually allowing him to sleep past six in the morning for once.

It’s a long day despite being a shorter shift than he normally works. His soccer moms all wish him Merry Christmas over the rims of 2PM sangrias, and he smiles and nods because he needs the tips, tries not to think of how they all look like his aunts because the last thing he needs is to remember the ghosts of all the panic attacks he had in bathrooms at holiday parties. He clocks out and drives home in a daze and it’s probably a miracle that he doesn’t wreck his damn car in the process, ending up at the door to the apartment in some odd skip of time and trying to blink the weariness from his eyes.

When he opens the door, the Christmas Pandora station is playing, and Marco is standing in the living room with one of the wrapped Walmart gifts held almost reverently in his hands.

“Can we talk?” Jean asks, and receives a mute nod in response. It takes a step closer for him to see that the reason Marco isn’t talking is that his eyes are swimming and too-bright. It feels like being hit in the stomach with a baseball bat. “Hey, no. Baby, c’mere, please don’t cry.”

Marco puts the present down on the coffee table and curls around him, hands grasping at his shirt and face buried in the space between his neck and shoulder, a small sniffle before he speaks with a thick voice. “I shouldn’t have yelled at you. It’s not your fault, I don’t want to fight at Christmas, I’m really sorry…”

“And I’m sorry for being such a prick about everything,” Jean replies, telling himself that he is _not_ going to cry and not doing a very good job at stopping his voice from cracking. “It’s just… this season’s never been great for me, y’know? Bad memories. I wanted to take the chance to forget them.”

“That’s what I was trying to _do_ with all of this, Jean,” Marco chokes out, stepping back and rubbing at his eyes with the heel of his hand. “Did you really think this was all for my benefit? I _know_ that this time of year’s rough for you. I _know_ you’ve got bad memories. I wanted to make new ones. Good ones. With us.”

They met completely by chance, a fluke of fate that registered them for the same bullshit Philosophy class and made them partners on a group project and gave them a surprising network of mutual friends. Sometimes when Jean can’t sleep at night, he thinks about the world that could have been if he’d signed up for Biology instead. It’s not a world that would result in him standing in a tinsel-trimmed, fairy-lit apartment in Seattle, a breath away from bawling his eyes out on Christmas Eve. It’s not a world where finally he became aware of his own sadness to the point of making the decision to fight it. It’s not a world where he’s facing some of the problems he has now, but it’s also not a world where he is constantly and incredibly blown away by just how much Marco fucking _loves_ him, far beyond what he knows how to deal with, far beyond what he deserves.

They spend the rest of that night making new memories, good memories, lazy touches that turn blazing beneath tangled sheets and love whispered against sweat-damp skin that gets lost somewhere in the fragile gasps and the death rattle of their dying space heater.

* * *

The next morning comes hatefully early, Marco bouncing up and down on the mattress like - well, like a kid at Christmas, and Jean thinks blearily that a grown-ass man jumping around, naked as the day he was born and hollering about opening presents should probably be disturbing instead of so endearing that he can hardly stand it.

He eventually gets up, albeit grudgingly, shivering until he finds his designated sleep hoodie and the worn out TARDIS pajama pants he’s had since high school. Marco, of course, puts on his hideous light-up sweater and barely even bothers to button his jeans before he fucking _rockets_ into the living room. Jean will be moving considerably more slowly until he’s got a decent amount of caffeine in him, but the time it takes for him to shuffle into the living room is all Marco needed to boot up his laptop and ring a Skype call back to Vermont, chatting animatedly with his siblings while Jean paws through the cupboard in search of coffee.

“--so long story short that’s how I recently got invested in the professional Turkish oil wrestling betting circuit,” Marco’s brother Michael is finishing up some story by the time Jean’s coherent enough to process anything, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes and collapsing onto the couch in front of the camera.

“See if you can win me enough to pay my tuition, Mick,” Jean yawns, curling his feet up under him and watching Marco teetering back to the coffee table with an armload of presents. “Working in the food industry’s killing me.”

“I’m not giving you a red cent, Kirschtein.”

“I’ll keep that in mind when you need a hearing aid someday, asshole.”

“Be nice, it’s Christmas,” Marco chides, ripping into the package with the watch. “Ooh, this is nice! Thank you, baby!”

“You’re exceptionally hard to shop for, I’ll have you know,” Jean counters, draining his first cup of coffee and feeling considerably more awake for it as he turns back to the Skype call. “How are you guys even functioning on the East Coast; it’s like… six in the morning over there.”

“We’re from a long line of Christmas Warriors,” Michael deadpans, tilting his laptop screen so the camera shifts. “Speaking of which, someone dropped by to say hi.”

“Mom?” She’s standing in the background with Marco’s parents and a couple of his oldest brothers, looking tired but happy and waving at him with the hand that’s not clutching a cup of espresso. Like mother like son.

“Oh man, so many crosswords!” Marco’s in his own little world.

“Hi, sweetie,” Jean’s mom says, leaning over Michael’s shoulder to stare into the camera. “You’ve got your place decorated so pretty!”

“Thanks, Adele,” Marco grins from the other side of the coffee table, stacking his Christmas haul up in front of him. “You should have seen your manly lumberjack son almost cut his own arm off trying to get the tree down.”

Jean takes a swipe at him but misses, tugging the hood of his sweatshirt up with a harrumph. Marco and everyone else on the other end of the Skype call all laugh.

“Okay, so you guys are probably ready to go get breakfast, so I’ll make this quick,” says Marco, hopping up and dusting shreds of wrapping paper off his jeans. “Jean, your present’s sitting behind the computer.”

Frowning, Jean gets up off the couch and reaches around the back of the screen, picking up a single tiny box that’s wrapped in golden paper. Marco’s one of those infuriating present wrappers that mummifies everything in tape, so it takes forever, the idle chitchat continuing as he peels the paper strip by strip from the box. “I didn’t almost cut my arm off, for the record. I just wasn’t as skilled with a chainsaw as I pretended to - holy _shit_ godmother _fucker_.”

Jean’s pretty sure that Marco’s ten year old little sister just screamed. He’s even more sure that he just fucking dropped his fucking engagement ring on the fucking floor.

Marco laughs so hard that he falls over and knocks his laptop off the coffee table, the dregs of Jean’s coffee end up soaking into the carpet, and the whole thing is such a hot mess that he’s laughing and pissed at once, grabbing a flip-flop off the floor by the couch and smacking Marco with it while he’s still curled up in the fetal position howling, whapping every inch of him that he can get to and yelling “Fuck you! _Fuck_ you, you asshole, yes, I fucking hate you, yes, I swear to _God_ I’m gonna-- Yes. Yesyesyes _yes_.”

The Skype call got disconnected when the laptop fell, and there’s a lot of laughing and kissing before they even bother to dig around and grab the ring from where it rolled under the couch, Marco sitting there in his ugly sweater with dust bunnies in his hair and a smile that could light up a galaxy as he slips the simple band onto Jean’s finger.

“Good memories?” he murmurs against Jean’s lips, fingers tracing the tendons in his neck.

“I dropped my engagement ring under the couch, said about ten swears in front of your baby sister, and fucked our security deposit to hell with a coffee stain on the carpet,” Jean says flatly, and Marco almost looks worried until he breaks out into a grin and finishes with. “The best memories.”

Jean’s not fond of the holidays, but he didn’t account for the Marco Factor when making plans to avoid them. He didn’t account for the little band of gold (gold like tinsel, gold like ornaments and bows and Christmas lights on Marco’s skin) around his finger and the fact that maybe bad memories are just a chance to make better ones.

Jean’s not fond of the holidays, but when Marco twines strong arms around his waist and whispers _Merry Christmas_ , he says it back earnestly for what feels like the first time in his life.

**Author's Note:**

> So, this was my 2014 JM Secret Santa Exchange present for [Ciera](http://ohsnapciera.tumblr.com). Christmas fluff you asked for, and Christmas fluff I (tried to) deliver! I hope you like it! Merry Christmas, bby <3


End file.
